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Consumer MEMS Products: Quality Rather than Commodity

Submitted by root on Tue, 08/01/2017 - 16:05

When it comes to MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) sensors, Bosch is both a pioneer and the world's leading manufacturer. The company developed the underlying semiconductor manufacturing process in house, and has been producing these sensors on an industrial scale for over 20 years now. To date, Bosch sensors can not only be found in most cars but as well in three out of four smartphones worldwide, and 75 percent of Bosch MEMS sensors are now used in consumer electronics applications.

While first early consumer sensor products had only moderate complex signal read out chains for the MEMS sensors, more recent products are more and more driven by advanced ASIC features containing, depending on their field of application, integrated micro controllers, digital signal processors, image pipelines, external components and more. At the same time, also the complexity of the considered MEMS application grew significantly, from terrestrial magnetic, acceleration and yaw sensors to new systems such as the micro mirror.

This keynote will discuss some of the challenges Bosch Sensortec is facing in the ASIC development for current and future MEMS products. Special attention is paid to the changes in the design and verification methodology which became necessary in order to tackle these challenges while originating from a mixed-signal heritage.